Weekend Vineyard Getaway

I had the most amazing weekend. I was one of the lucky few bloggers to be invited to the Fratelli estate in Akluj.

We set out from Bandra at 7am, and after a seven hour journey and a few hiccups (we blamed it on the curse of Friday the 13th) we settled into the spacious and extremely comfortable  rooms at the Fratelli guest house. With bay windows opening onto a sprawling lawn and a view of the vineyard, I barely wanted to leave the room. But what we were treated to after was more that any of us could have asked for.

Here’s a photo journey of the trip:

The guest house

Equipped with four spacious bedrooms and a lounge area completely pimped out with a pool table, flat screen TV and home theatre. The staff is extremely warm and they all went out of their way to make our stay comfortable.  They share a very obvious friendship and mutual respect amongst themselves which creates a very homely environment.  The food tastes so good, very ghar ka khana (home food) like.  We overate at every meal!

Our BLUE room

And the blue bathroom

A room with a view

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Tour of the winery and cellar

We missed Fratelli’s Tuscan Viticulturist and Oenologist Piero Masi on our trip to the vineyard, but Sandeep, the Assistant Winemaker took us through the entire winemaking process in their state of the art winery. The post-modern winery designed of glass and metal is modelled after a European Ferrari showroom.  The cellar houses the Sette, which is the Fratelli Reserve oaked for a year, and currently only available for purchase at the vineyard.

Italian equipment with the capacity of 6 lac litres

The oak casks in the cellar hold the 2011 reserve

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Wine tasting

Sipping eleven Fratelli wines directly under millions of stars in the sky in the early January chill. What more could you ask for?! If it is crackers, cheese and olives, we had that too.

I’m partial to the whites and loved the Chardonnay 2011. I also enjoyed the Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese. More tasting notes here.

The entire range

All set for the tasting

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A night at the vineyard

Fellow bloggers Sonu and Jasleen from Fashion Bombay and Anisha from The Backpackers Co. were my travel mates. And as the wine flowed, so did the conversation 🙂

Settling in for the night

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ATV awesomeness

The ATVs are the perfect way to get around the vineyard around the winery, and such good fun!

Vrooooomm

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Vineyard tour, grape tasting, Syrah hill

A 20 minute ride away from the estate is Fratelli’s 150 acre vineyard where they’ve created three reservoirs to irrigate the entire property. We tasted different grape varieties as we drove up to the quaint hut on Syrah hill. A beautiful 360 degree view, cool breeze and chilled wine – the perfect spot to spend a couple of hours in the afternoon, enjoying the beauty around.

Bunches and bunches of grapes all around

Vineyards as far as the eye can see

Syrah Hill

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Our last night at the vineyard ended with a cultural performance (lejhim) by a troupe from the village as we huddled around the bonfire. A great end to a great weekend. I’m looking forward to going back there during harvest next month.

See more pictures here

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The story of Fratelli Wines

In the Sholapur district of Maharashtra, near the town of Akluj, lies a 240-acre vineyard. This sprawling vineyard belongs to three sets of brothers – Alessio and Andrea Secci, Kapil and Gaurav Sekhri and Ranjit and Arjun Mohite – Patil, who came together in the first Indo-Italian wine partnership in the country. Each set belonging to different industries, their joint venture brought together experts in wine production, business and distribution. Rather fittingly then, they decided to name their wines Fratelli meaning ‘brothers’ in Italian.

This labour of love for the brothers began in 2006 and was no easy feat. What followed was a year long process of grading the soil, digging trenches and properly irrigating the land – all without shortcuts in keeping with the owners’ belief that good wine starts in the vineyard. But perhaps their best move yet was bringing on board the reputed Tuscan Viticulturist and Oenologist Piero Masi.

Piero Masi tending to the Fratelli vineyards

The state of the art Winery is equipped with 58 multi-capacity tanks imported from Velo, Italy (a first by anyone in Asia) and installed at the Co’s Motewadi site, ensuring that once the grapes are harvested, within an hour they are processed in absolutely fresh condition. The Winery also boasts a fully equipped high-tech laboratory for testing at each and every stage of the production process from grapes to finished product. The winery has an installed capacity of around 6 lac liters.

In late 2007-2008 Fratelli’s first saplings were sown. The 350,000 wine saplings that were imported from France and Italy were specially handpicked by Masi and his team. Their first vintage reached consumers in 2010 and in the year that followed Fratelli went from one milestone to the next. Today they are easily one of the most promising vineyards to be born of out India’s wine production boom.

Fratelli Wines now cultivates 13 varietals –

1.         Pinot Noir

2.         Sangiovese

3.         Cabernet Sauvignon

4.         Marsalan

5.         Petit Verdot

6.         Merlot

7.         Syrah

8.         Cabernet Franc

9.         Chenin Blanc

10.       Sauvignon Blanc

11.       Chardonnay

12.       Gewürztraminer

13.       Muller Thurgau

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Metro Wine Map of France

I was sent this wine map recently and found it extremely interesting.

Most wine maps are a nightmare to decipher. They try to say too much and end up conveying very little. This wine map is created by architectural historian and wine buff Dr. David Gissen. Earlier this year, in mid-January, Gissen began his adventures with French wine and started tweeting about it. After months of trying as many wines as he could lay his hands on and developing a geographical sense of French wines, he chronicled his journey in The Metro Wine Map of France which was unveiled in September 2011. Very informative and simple to read, it doesn’t take a cartophile to figure this one out.

The map is modelled on the metro map to show France’s complex wine regions. The clarity of the electrical circuit like depiction of the metro map is used to differentiate between the 10 main wine-producing regions in France.

The coloured lines on this wine map denote the various wine-producing regions and the dots are the significant cities or towns in those regions. The little branches signify the appellations which indicate where the grapes for a particular wine are grown. The map also provides the names of the main grape varieties used in each region (the white ones italicised), like chardonnay / pinot noir / merlot.

via De Long Wine

Follow David Gissen @100aocs